


Portrait

by monsterofyourmaking



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Little bit of angst, Rey's drawing skills, Short, Sweet, ben has issues, ficlet for art
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 12:57:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13458750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monsterofyourmaking/pseuds/monsterofyourmaking
Summary: Rey also had a certain talent for drawing, which she put to good use in teasing Ben.





	Portrait

**Author's Note:**

> My first ever work for this fandom, written on the spot for [ this wonderful piece of art ](https://monsterofyourmaking.tumblr.com/post/169897968686/ask9t-she-also-had-a-certain-talent-for-drawing) by [ask9t](http://ask9t.tumblr.com) :)

“Just sit over there. Don’t move. You can meditate, don’t think I haven’t caught you skipping that a lot lately. Whatever, just  _sit still._ “

And Ben does, grumbling but meek, folding his body onto the too small stone seat, just as he folds every time in front of Rey’s enthusiasm. They’ve been playing this sulking-grumbling-relenting game for so long that Ben sometimes forgets to play his part, but for some reason, Rey likes it better when he puts up a token of a fight. Her joy at getting her way is so infectious he doesn’t even mind losing anymore.

Half-way during Rey’s sketching practice and Ben’s “pretending-to-meditate” practice Ben loses himself in the admiration of sunlight catching on Rey’s hair. The daydream comes to a rather abrupt stop when a porg tries to make a nest on his lap. 

“I told you to sit still!“

“But-“

“Ooooh, hold on. Hold it. That’s perfect.“

A rustle of pages and Rey dives in the drawing with renewed vigor. Ben just sighs and sits it out. There are worse things to have than a portrait of himself with a porg. 

Half an hour later, Rey finishes off the drawing with a flourishing signature and looks up. “Would you like a look?”

It’s not really a question - she’s brimming with excitement to show him, he can feel it. Her skills aren’t half bad - he’s seen her other sketches - and it’s true that he wants to see it. Wants to, and at the same time he’s a little apprehensive. Afraid to see a shadow of a monster lurking around the lines… 

He needn’t have worried. The full spread of the page is filled with the damned creature that has posed on his lap, every feather rendered in loving detail. 

“Isn’t it just the cutest?“ she beams at him, and Ben agrees mutely, cursing his warm cheeks, cursing the squeeze of his heart that’s again been too foolish to hope. Cute, nice, beautiful things: those are the things Rey draws, those are the things any artist wants to portray. There’s enough misery and foulness in the world for people to want to look at it in art as well. 

 

*

 

Rey stops laughing at Ben’s crumbled expression when she realises Ben isn’t there anymore. Probably stormed off to sulk somewhere else. 

Well. But it  _was_  a good joke. 

She flips up the topmost page on her sketchbook and sets out to find Ben. Force knows he deserves to be the butt of every joke in the Galaxy but she isn’t as cruel as to let him go without the true reward for his patient compliance.

She walks up to his hut and sure enough, there she spots him through the open door - but he’s not curled into a ball of outrage and injured pride, nor is he breaking something. He appears to be sitting at his small table, his back to the door.

There are sheets and sheets of paper scattered on the floor around him, and Rey doesn’t need the sparse light in the hut to see that these are all drawings of her. Her face - from every possible angle - serene in meditation, radiant in a laugh - that exhilarating surprise when she first mastered Force jumping - it’s all there, and more, some of the faces she doesn’t remember ever making on this island, there’s one with hatred and revenge in her eyes, framed with specks of falling snow… How long exactly has Ben been drawing her?

Rey nearly jumps out of her skin when she catches the sight of Ben’s face - but it’s only its reflection in a mirror, and his gaze is not directed at her. It’s focused close on itself, and flicking between the mirror and a sheet of paper in front of it. The creaking of charcoal drawn angrily across the paper are the only sounds disturbing the silence.

Ben is drawing himself, Rey realises - and at the same time, her heart sinks. Because the face in the mirror is wrong - of course, the scar would be on the other cheek, and the line of Ben’s mouth would be crooked the other way - but it’s not just that. It’s he unhappy frown darkening his eyes with the weight of past failures, and it’s the mouth that only has smiles for her but never for his own image. There’s only as much self-loathing a paper can bear and Rey has to put a stop to it. 

“You’re doing it wrong, you know.“

She takes the self-portrait of an unlovable man - a man who doesn’t exist anymore, save for his own nightmares - out of Ben’s stunned fingers and replaces is with her own. 

“This is you. This is how I see you.“


End file.
